As this issue's "This Week
in History" feature notes, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, founded in
1930, was unaffected by the repeal of Prohibition three years later.
The end of alcohol prohibition was an incredible historic event representing
a massive rollback of government power, very much against the trend of
the 20th century. But it was also a much simpler matter than what
we are facing today in the campaign against drug prohibition.

Unlike alcohol prohibition,
which was statutorily fairly simple and primarily a US phenomenon, drug
prohibition is a many-tentacled beast reaching into virtually all areas
of policy and which is bound around the globe to a complex web of laws
and treaties that affect more than just recreational drugs. A large
and well-monied range of special interests feed off the drug war's enforcement
and related policies, at all levels of government, in most if not all departments
of those governments, as well as private sector institutions promoted and
subsidized by Congress, and in all countries.

Just keeping track of every
drug war attack on our freedoms and fellow human beings is a dizzyingly
difficult endeavor. There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands
of ways politicians, drug-fighters and bureaucrats can ramp up drug war
oppression, and equally many directions from which their attacks can come,
all of which require energy and attention if they are to be stopped:

A farmer has to team up with
the ACLU and sue his town, suffering personal and economic retaliation,
to protect his son and others from school drug testing, as recounted in
next week's PBS documentary.

Hemp food producers and their
advocates have to file court papers in an ongoing battle to stop the DEA
from shutting their legal industry.

An incoming DEA administrator
promises "information sharing," not only with other law enforcement agencies,
but with the private sector. What ominous civil liberties questions
does that raise, particularly given the notorious dishonesty or poor judgment
of many DEA agents and officials?

The popular activist
expression, "think globally, act locally," applies well to our issue, but
in two different ways. One way is to engage the drug issue in our
nations, states and localities, to talk to politicians and officials in
Congress and at the UN, but also with our city council members and our
school boards and with our teachers and friends and neighbors. The
other way is to take on the partial but important issues making up the
many corners of drug policy -- drug testing, hemp, Andean crop spraying,
sentencing, financial aid, forfeiture, medical marijuana, syringe availability,
the list goes on -- but not neglect the overarching need, the philosophy
and cause and moral and practical imperative for cutting off those tentacles
at their root and making the world a safer, kinder, healthier, more just
place -- ending prohibition. And both these meanings must be brought
together.

The discussion in Cartagena
last week did bring them together. As cocaleros and their supporters
called for, we must make "peace with coca" and other plants. But
as Dutch researcher Peter Cohen noted, we must also make "peace with the
powder" -- prohibition itself must end, not just for coca or marijuana,
but for drugs across the board, even the drugs that sometimes cause harm.
Stopping the war against the coca growers requires cooperation among activists
and officials in the producing nations of the Andes, but it also needs
the work of advocates and supporters here in the US, where the lion's share
of the international pressure causing the eradication campaigns and other
repressive measures originates. And ending prohibition of drugs itself,
not only the campaigns against plants like coca and hemp that can also
serve as food and for other uses, will ultimately need to include a global
component of many countries deciding together to restructure their policies
and to amend or withdraw from international treaties. And advocacy
toward that objective is a complex task to be pursued within the international
halls of power at the UN but also in the political systems in capitols
around the world.

But as complicated and huge
and daunting is the task, that doesn't mean it can't be done. As
large and diverse are the forces arrayed against us, much greater nevertheless
are the human need compelling us to work for our cause, and the powerful
truths that we speak. We need not achieve the impossible goal of
matching the power of the drug war in its execution; we need only speak
out and organize in the right ways, at the right times, to set larger forces
in motion everywhere that will change the world. Though injustice
and intrusion pervade our laws and courts, in the end the court of public
opinion will turn our way and speak a new law.

2.
DRCNet Needs Your Help

Dear Week Online reader:

Since we launched our latest
book offer, Jacob Sullum's "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use," and appealed
to our readers for to help us reach the fall when major grants are expected
to be received, more than 250 of you have responded to the call with book
orders and donations providing much-needed funds. Because of you,
we continue!

Because we are looking at
more months, however, DRCNet's adverse financial situation unfortunately
still remains. We need more of your help, from more of you, in order
to continue to operate and get through this difficult time. The fall
is likely to see exciting and groundbreaking new projects at DRCNet, along
with the rest of our core work. So please help assure DRCNet can
continue functioning until then by visiting http://www.drcnet.org/donate/
and making the most generous contribution you can afford -- $35 or more
will still get you a free copy of "Saying Yes," or your choice of our other
current membership premiums.

You can also send in your
donation by mail -- visit http://www.drcnet.org/donate/
and click on the PDF link to print out a form to send in, or just mail
your check or money order to: DRCNet, P.O. Box 18402, Washington,
DC 20036 -- and contact us for instructions if you'd like to make a contribution
of stock. (Remember that donations to the Drug Reform Coordination
Network are not tax-deductible. If you wish to make a tax-deductible
donation to support our educational work, make your check payable to DRCNet
Foundation, same address.)

The Global Social Forum Special
Thematic Meeting on Democracy, Human Rights, Wars, and Drug Trafficking
is now over, its participants have scattered to the four winds, and the
search for meaningful results will now begin. According to event
organizers, more than 4,700 people from some two dozens countries came
to Cartagena for a week's worth of panels, workshops, roundtables and speeches
on topics ranging from the micro (such as creating a space for women in
village politics and the economics of small-plot coca cultivation) to the
macro (such as the role of the United Nations in defending human rights
and the impact of anti-drug policies on society, economy, and the environment).

As noted last week, much
of the forum was informed by a harsh critique of US foreign policies, especially
as they play out in Colombia. But participants also went beyond mere
critique as, in panel after panel, people came together in search of solutions
to the problems inflamed by the ongoing civil war cum drug war cum war
on terrorism in Colombia. The backdrop was the gleaming beachfront
high-rises and colonial-era fortresses of old Cartagena, but the subject
matter of the forum was nuts and bolts activism, whether on how to organize
youth in urban slums, how media activists could confront established news
outlets with preordained agendas, or how to build authentically democratic
social movements in an atmosphere of war and intimidation.

And old clashes sometimes
generated new heat, most notably when Human Rights Watch director Jose
Miguel Vivanco used the occasion of a panel on the UN and human rights
to rip into Cuba's human rights record. Not only did Vivanco's denunciation
of the recent execution of three hijackers and the imprisonment of nonviolent
dissidents draw hisses and boos from some in the crowd, it also drew a
stern rebuke from the Cuban ambassador to Colombia. Vivanco and the
ambassador exchanged angry mutual accusations over whether Cuba allowed
access to its prisoners, but much of the crowd was clearly on the side
of the embattled Castro government.

The drug-related sessions
of the forum were, for the most part, less controversial and less acerbic,
as the critique of prohibitionism has gained increasing acceptance, even
in the nominally Catholic and conservative countries of Latin America.
For those with some experience with drug policy, there was little new in
terms of global revelations; instead, there was a filling in of detail.
A panel of Brazilian harm reductionists, to give one example, showed how
prohibition and the drug trade work in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and
the cannabis fields of the Brazilian northeast, while Spanish Basque activist
Martin Barriuso explained how drug reformers were able to make serious
advances in Spain despite a regressive political atmosphere. Similarly,
Dutch social scientist Peter Cohen, noting the loud calls for "peace with
coca," told the audience it must also seek peace with cocaine instead of
demonizing the powder.

While much, if not all, of
the discussion at the forum focused on Colombia and the brutal conflict
fueled by US military hardware and the illegal drug profits created by
prohibition, it was the drug trafficking axis organized by the Mama Coca
collective (http://www.mamacoca.org -- see the interview below with Dario
Gonzalez Posso as well as last week's interviews for more) where drug reformers,
peasants, organizers and academics from Latin America, Europe, Asia, and
North America came together in an effort to move toward reform on a global
level. Some 60 or 70 people met on Wednesday, June 18 to see whether
they could reach a consensus on how to move forward.

"We would like to present
a proposal to form a global commission on drug policy," said Mama Coca
cofounder Dario Gonzalez Posso as he introduced the plan. "We need
to evaluate these anti-drug policies. After three decades of drug
war, it is time to present alternatives and come up with new models.
There are precedents for this sort of commission," Gonzalez Posso added,
"such as the meeting on human rights and international law in Colombia
that took place in Costa Rica in 2001. This commission was to present
its results to the UN, and we hope to do the same," he explained.

Now is the time, Gonzalez
Posso said. "We are seeing important movements taking place around
coca growing in Bolivia and Peru, as well as in Colombia, where last September
people began looking at the problem of proscribed cultivation from within
the context of agrarian reform," he pointed out. "There are also
important initiatives in other countries, such as the efforts to get governments
to ask the UN to repeal or amend the anti-drug conventions."

Gonzalez Posso also outlined
some general criteria for any such commission. "We need an analysis
based on human rights, not only relating to the health and well-being of
consumers and producers, but also the defense of the environment and the
rural milieu," he said. "We need to develop informed proposals to
end the criminalization of growers, the demonization of plants and the
penalization of consumers. We need to make known and vindicate the
medicinal value of the coca, poppy and marijuana plants," he said.
"And we need to ensure that the committees that help create this commission
are formed by people from all over the world who are experts in their field,
whether it is drug policy or harm reduction or agriculture."

Research by such a commission
would have several concrete goals, Gonzalez Posso continued. "We
need to analyze traditional policies in such a way as to create a database
for the UN, and we need to be able to demonstrate the diverse impacts generated
by prohibition policies in the long run. We also must design a mechanism
for social oversight of drug phenomenon. We are not talking about
a new bureaucratic infrastructure but about creating a new movement.
The commission we envision is not something to be imposed, but something
that is fed and strengthened by local social forums around the world."

While a general consensus
in favor of the Mama Coca commission proposal seemed to emerge, it was
by no means unanimous, and the discussion that followed showed clearly
the differing perspectives of those in attendance. For Ricardo Soberon,
coordinator of the Peruvian Frontier Programs Project Advisory Board, it
was imperative that any commission look at drug production, consumption
and trafficking worldwide. "We must go beyond the national level,"
he said.

Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt,
a British drug users' advocate and editor of the London-based Users' Voice,
warned that drug users must not be excluded from any such commission.
"While we need to respect the diversity of this global movement, we also
need to be inclusive. People who use drugs are too often excluded
from participation. We must be included," she said.

Basque cannabis activist
Martin Barriuso expressed enthusiasm moderated by concerns over the workability
of a large project. "It will be difficult, and perhaps we should
start with an annual report on people adversely affected by drug policies,"
Barriuso said. "Maybe we should also break it up into different parts
of the world. For example, in the Basque country, we don't focus
much on the environmental impact of drug prohibition, so there we might
want to concentrate on other aspects. The first thing is to get the
opinions of the people actually affected by these drug policies."

Francisco Thoumi, a Colombian
academic and expert on the drug trade there, cautioned that the UN conventions
may not be the insuperable obstacle many suppose. "I've worked with
the UN on drug issues," he said, "and the current conventions can be interpreted
in different ways. Coca, for example, was not prohibited by the 1961
convention; instead, Peruvian and Bolivian elites committed themselves
to end coca chewing in 25 years." Still, said Thoumi, there is still
a need for study of coca crops in the Andes, and there are a couple of
questions any commission would need to address. "What will you do
about plants not used for illicit uses, and how do you prevent leakage
from the licit to the illicit sector?"

Peter Cohen

And while some academics
repeated the call for more investigations, more research, not everyone
agreed. The research is there already, some suggested. "Adding
a document to a warehouse full of documents is not very useful," argued
Peter Cohen, director of the Dutch Center for Drug Research in Amsterdam
(CEDRO). "If we are going to do something, let's think about activities
that will raise the profile of those groups who suffer most from prohibition.
It is clear who those groups are in Latin America," Cohen argued.
"But no one knows these people exist. At this point, our work is
only partly intellectual -- that work has been done -- and we need to have
a basically political focus. In order to save the seals in Antarctica,
it was important that a French filmmaker filmed those little seals being
killed to arouse public opinion. We need to do something similar
now."

Still, said Marco Perduca,
executive director of the International Antiprohibitionist League, given
the United Nations' refusal to analyze the impact of drug prohibition,
"if official organizations are not going to do this, perhaps civil society
can. We need to do this at the global level, because everyone is
affected by prohibition, and not just of drugs, but of sex, of information,
of research." Nor should reform efforts limit themselves to the UN's
anti-drug bodies, he added. "We can use the UN system to call attention
to violations of economic, social and cultural rights protected by the
UN Charter. The UN has a committee that deals with violations of
these rights. It issues recommendations and proclamations that are
sent to governments. This could be a first step, but we also have
to work with deputies and parliamentarians in the various countries so
we can get governments to raise these issues at the UN."

Luiz Paulo Guanabara

Not everyone signed on.
North American Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies and Witness
for Peace told the meeting he would continue to concentrate his limited
resources on Colombia. And a delegation from Brazil consisting of
antiprohibitionist and harm reduction groups also demurred. "We had
meetings among ourselves about this," said Luiz Paulo Guanabara of Psico-Tropicus,
"and the consensus we reached was 'fuck the UN.' We think our time
and resources will be better spent influencing policy in Brazil, which
could well lead the way to reform on a regional basis," he explained.

Others were unable to commit
pending consultation with home offices. Sharda Sekaran of the US
Drug Policy Alliance told DRCNet she would be reporting to her bosses and
a decision on participation would come after that. Similarly, DRCNet's
Phillip Smith, while eager to explain DRCNet's antiprohibitionist position
to the audience, made no commitment to participate pending discussions
within the organization.

At least one Colombian workers'
and peasants' group had no such concerns. "We welcome this proposal,"
said Luis Carlos Alvaro of the Colombian National Confederation of Workers.
"We have already created an agrarian mandate for reform here in Colombia,
and we think that can be integrated into this proposal. Speaking
as small farmers, we believe it is imperative to talk about the cultivation
of illicit crops. The growing of such crops is related to the unequal
distribution of land. The government wants to make us small farmers
invisible. We want to be part of this proposal," Alvaro affirmed.

For Mama Coca and Gonzalez
Posso, the general tenor of the conversation was enough to say, "I understand
that it is a yes, we have a positive reaction to our proposal, and work
toward this global commission needs to begin. It is now time to create
a committee to push forward this global commission, but we don't want just
another bunch of meetings. We must construct a process that creates
a network of working groups, and we must start it now," he said.
"We will propose some meetings; we will look for the best moments.
We recognize there are other groups working on this, and we will seek to
form a converging initiative."

But that process will take
time, Gonzalez Posso told DRCNet. "I think it will be six months
at least before we have a real framework. There is still much to
decide, much to be done."

While panel after panel addressed
various aspects of democracy, human rights, war, and drugs, for the purposes
of drug reformers, it was the Wednesday session with Mama Coca that was
the highlight of the conference. After all, for most of the people
in attendance at that session, the ills of prohibition, as articulated
at the forum, are old news. What is new and exciting is the prospect
of forming a global movement for reform.

In that sense, for some in
attendance, Cartagena was also a chance to renew friendships and expand
networks established at the DRCNet-sponsored Mérida "Out from the
Shadows" conference in February. Among those who attended both meetings
were Peruvians Baldomero Cáceres, Hugo Cabieses and Nancy Obregón;
Brazilian Luiz Paulo Guanabara; Colombian María Mercedes Moreno
of Mama Coca; Dutch academic Peter Cohen; English user activist Andria
Efthimiou-Mordaunt; Don Wirtshafter from the Ohio Hempery; and the International
Antiprohibitionist League's Marco Perduca. And while not all of them
will be participating in Mama Coca's call for a global commission, the
informal networks of global drug reform are growing as well.

4.
DRCNet Interview: Dario Gonzalez Posso, cofounder of Mama Coca

Colombian social scientist
Dario Gonzalez Posso has been working on issues of war and peace in his
home country for more than 20 years. He founded the Colombian Institute
for Peace and Development Studies (INDEPAZ in its Spanish-language acronym)
in 1984, and was more recently a cofounder of the loose network of academics
and activists known as Mama Coca (http://www.mamacoca.org).
Along with María Mercedes Moreno, Henry Salgado and the Mama Coca
collective, Posso played a critical role in placing drug policy on the
agenda of the Global Social Forum's special thematic meeting in Cartagena,
Colombia, last week. DRCNet spoke with Posso in Cartagena on Sunday.

Week Online: The Global
Social Forum in Cartagena described its themes as being democracy, human
rights, war, and the drug trade. Did that accurately describe what
you and Mama Coca hoped to do at the forum?

Dario Gonzalez Posso:
The organizers of the forum wanted to talk about the drug trade, but what
we were really more interested in was specifically issues related to the
cultivation of illicit crops -- what we prefer to describe as "proscribed
cultivation." The theme of the drug traffic is, of course, important,
but that is not what we wanted as a central focus, and that is not what
the panels and workshops we organized focused on. Instead, we studied
the problems related to proscribed cultivation, but we also looked at the
role of consumers and, of course, human rights. Human rights is key;
we are very interested in the rights of peasants to grow their crops and
in the rights of drug consumers to be left in peace. This means we
are against prohibitionism, and we believe we are seeing a growing anti-prohibitionist
consensus. Not everyone is anti-prohibitionist, and it is not necessary
that everyone be anti-prohibitionist, but that is where we stand.

WOL: Was the conference
a success in your view?

Gonzalez Posso: I cannot
talk about the forum in general. There were many, many events that
we did not have the time to participate in, but organizationally, I think
you have to say it was a success. More than 4,700 people registered
for the forum. Still, I think it is too early to say how successful
it was. We have to see what comes from it.

For us, there were very important
practical results with potentially great political importance. We
were able to forge agreement among diverse sectors to push for an international
commission to evaluate current anti-drug policy and form alternatives.
That commission will be formed by all who participated in the Mama Coca
axis at the forum, or at least by all who want to participate. Not
everyone sees the utility of working to reform the UN drug conventions,
especially when some groups must measure how best to use their limited
resources.

Still, I think we share a
common base and a commitment to pluralism, and while there are different
visions and different interests, these differences don't exclude groups
if they don't want to participate in the commission. The Brazilians,
for example, said they don't want to participate in the commission because
they would rather focus their energies at home. I think I can understand
that, given the Lula government's foreign policies, which are directed
toward a sort of regional or sub-regional integration. That has implications
for the entire continent, and our Brazilian friends can and will support
anti-prohibitionism from that perspective. It is not necessary that
we be homogenous; in fact, we seek pluralism.

WOL: Is there an identifiable
common ground even within these differences?

Gonzalez Posso: Even
if we have our differences, I think there are some basic criteria on which
we all agree. First is human rights. We need to advance and
support proposals based on the human rights, and in my view, that entails
ending prohibition. We must confront the criminalization of peasant
farmers who grow prohibited crops and the criminalization of drug users.
This is a human rights issue of the most fundamental sort. Also,
there is the strong interest in repealing or amending the UN anti-drug
conventions. Toward this end, we have a proposal to revalorize, to
explicitly recognize the virtues of prohibited crops in their cultural,
medical, industrial, creative and alimentary uses. As far as the
UN is concerned, crops like cannabis, coca and opium are simply prohibited
substances, and that's that. The centers of world power think they
can execute policies that will result in zero coca or zero cannabis, but
I think this is very illogical; it cannot be done. It is absurd and
arrogant to think you can eradicate a species; it is a gift from god.

We know that all of these
crops have long and varied histories. Take cannabis, for example,
since it is more familiar to North Americans and Europeans. It has
been used for thousands of years. It has been used to make clothing,
its seeds and oils are used in various products, and, of course, it has
a long history of recreational use. In the Andes, coca is associated
with the beginning of Andean agricultural civilization. The indigenous
people of the Andes never had cocaine, but they used coca in its natural
form as a food, and also as a substance with cultural significance for
them. Chewing the coca leaf is incorporated into indigenous life
in many ways and has many uses. And as Peruvian expert Baldomero
Cáceres pointed out, each leaf you chew is one leaf that doesn't
go into the drug trade.

The indigenous use of coca
is not as important in Colombia as in Peru, but here we have a minority
of indigenous people who use coca in the traditional manner and the culture
is the same. Throughout the Andes, when the Europeans came, they
brought with them the attitude that coca is something taken by backwards
people, by Indians, by primitives. Even some indigenous people identified
with this thinking. The plant was demonized, and it is still being
demonized today. This is why we think it is so important to include
the recuperation of the cultural role of coca as one of our goals.
Our countries are multicultural and multi-plural, and I believe we have
to accept that there are differences among cultures within a nation.
Here in Colombia, for example, we are African, indigenous, European, mestizo,
and none of these cultures is superior, just different from the others.
The recognition of and respect for other cultures is the very foundation
of human rights.

WOL: Is there a political
base in Colombia for anti-prohibitionism?

Gonzalez Posso: In
some of the more democratic sectors, for some time there has been a search
for responsibility -- who is to blame for the proscribed crops? And
the tendency is to say that it is the fault of the consumers, the North
Americans and Europeans. This is a mirror image of the discourse
from the North, which blames us, blames the producers. They say we
must stop the supply at the source to eliminate demand.

Neither of these positions
is valid. They both ignore the fact that the origin of all these
problems is prohibition. Prohibition created the drug trade.
Prohibition stimulates the creation of networks of organized crime.
And ironically, these prohibitionist efforts to suppress plants like cannabis,
coca and opium are one of the causes of the proliferation of synthetic
drugs, which effectively implicate more people than the plant drugs.

Prohibition also generates
a model of a criminal economy that is articulated with the international
financial system. The crops are grown one place and in an underground
economy, but in the end the profits are realized in the legal economy.
I believe that an anti-drug strategy that struck effective blows against
these capital flows and the money laundering would also wound the global
financial system. This, of course, represents a big obstacle to change
at the global level and is something we cannot deal with as one nation.
We have to transcend the international mafia that profits off this and
open an international debate. As yet, we have not progressed far
in that direction in Colombia.

WOL: Undoing the UN
conventions is a process that could take years to occur. What sort
of intermediate steps are you looking at?

Gonzalez Posso: There
are things we can do, but none of them will be easy. We have to go
one step at a time at the same time we work on the conventions. We
could begin with the non-criminalization of peasant growers and drug consumers.
We already have the legalization of possession and use in small amounts
in Colombia. But President Uribe wants to change this; it is part
of a referendum he wants Colombians to vote on. This is a real step
backward. We don't know if it will pass, but we fear it could.

The referendum deals with
other things too, but it is a trick, a deception. Uribe is carrying
Bush's mission to Colombia. They want to say there is a dilemma:
You can have security or you can have human rights, but this is a false
dilemma. They try more than ever to mix the issue of proscribed crops
with the security issue. It is necessary to eliminate the funding
for the guerrillas and the paramilitaries, they say, but what does this
imply for us? It means the government will attack the peasants, it
will ignore the internationally recognized distinction between combatants
and civilians. The fumigation of peasant crops is not about alternative
development, it is an act of war, a military objective.

Such actions violate both
the Geneva accords and the United Nations' own charter. This has
been documented by the UN and by the Colombian government. The fumigation
of proscribed crops affects the villagers' rights to health and a clean
environment. It also disrupts the social fabric, causing the decomposition
of families and the creation of displaced people. But you must also
understand that the cultivation most affected is that of food. The
proscribed crops are often planted near food crops, and they are destroyed
by the fumigation. This produces hunger and refugees. And those
most affected, of course, are the children. This is fundamental,
for the international community recognizes and values the need to respect
the rights of children most of all.

5. New Poll
Shows Greatest-Ever Public Support for Legalizing Marijuana

A poll released Tuesday (6/24)
by Zogby International found that 41% of Americans agree "the government
should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol:
It should regulate it, control it, tax it and only make it illegal for
children." This represents a striking increase from previous nationwide
polls on making marijuana legal.

"Over 40% of Americans basically
think that marijuana prohibition makes no more sense than alcohol Prohibition,
and should be repealed," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the
Drug Policy Alliance.

Nearly two years ago USA
Today ran a front page story with the findings of a USA Today/CNN/Gallup
poll which found that support for legalizing marijuana was at its highest
in 30 years, with 34% in favor, up from 15% in 1972. The jump over
two years to 41% is similar to other rapid shifts in public opinion around
marijuana decriminalization in Canada, Britain and elsewhere.

The poll released today interviewed
1,204 adults chosen at random nationwide. They were asked to agree
or disagree with the following statement: "Some people say the government
should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol:
It should regulate marijuana, control it, tax it, and only make it illegal
for children." The margin of error is +/- 2.9%.

"No other criminal law on
the books in this country is enforced so vigorously, yet backed by such
a small majority of Americans," said Nadelmann. "When two of every
five citizens say it's time to make marijuana legal, the government's response
should be to reduce penalties and reevaluate the law, yet the federal government
is doing just the opposite: blocking the availability of marijuana
for medical purposes, prohibiting the production of hemp for industrial
purposes, and spending billions of dollars per year on the war on marijuana."

"US marijuana policy is increasingly
out of step with our closest allies and neighbors," said Nadelmann, pointing
to the decriminalization of marijuana in Canada, Switzerland, Britain,
the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy and elsewhere.

In a hearing marked most
by uneventfulness and lack of passion or strong interest, the Senate Judiciary
Committee questioned DEA administrator nominee Karen P. Tandy. The
hearing lasted no more than 30 minutes, and was attended only sparsely
attended by the committee's members. There were never more than five
members present, and for much of the hearing only senators Jeff Sessions
(R-AL) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) were present. No difficult questions
were asked, and at no time was Tandy pinned down on a particular issue.
Sessions, a friend of Tandy, said she "has consistently shown great capabilities
[in getting the job done]."

Responding to a question
from Sessions on what Tandy considered her biggest challenges and goals,
she stated that "after 9-11 the redirection of resources placed the responsibility
of drug enforcement more squarely on the shoulders of the DEA than ever
before," and outlined four goals:

To ensure the protection of
America and America's kids from drugs;

To ensure widespread sharing
of information from the federal level to the state and private sector level,
which she claimed would ensure "maximum impact" as "the most effective
means of reducing the 63 billion dollar illicit drug industry in the US";

To dismantle the drug trade
industry, which she called key for the DEA; and

To streamline the DEA:
"My pledge is if I am confirmed, I will ensure that those who succeed [in
the DEA]... are those who are promoted."

Hatch then said that "there
is a direct correlation between drug trafficking and terrorism," and asked
how Tandy would respond, to which Tandy answered, "DEA has constructed
a priority targeting system" to address threats within our borders and
without, adding that she was particularly concerned about targeting the
money, because "it is the money that funds this horrific preying on our
children."

Hatch, the committee's chairman
then gave a spiel about how Tandy and assistant attorney general nominee
Christopher Wray (also present at the hearing) both are qualified candidates,
and said "I'm sure that your confirmation will pass in short order."

According to a bulletin distributed
by the Marijuana Policy Project, between three and five senators, including
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), will be submitting written questions to Tandy,
thereby forcing her to put her views on medical marijuana on record.
Medical marijuana patient Suzanne Pfeil, who suffers from post-polio syndrome,
attended the hearing and waited to hand-deliver a letter. Tandy attempted
to sneak away through a back door instead of approaching and speaking with
Pfeil, but Pfeil chased Tandy down the halls in her wheelchair and delivered
her letter. (Visit http://www.dontconfirm.org
for pictures.)

Editorial Comment:
Tandy may succeed in accomplishing her bureaucratic objectives, sharing
more information with other agencies and streamlining the DEA -- though
it isn't likely -- but it won't make difference. She won't succeed
in, nor even make progress toward, her performance goals of dismantling
the drug trade industry and protecting America's children from drugs, because
she has already rejected the only strategy -- legalization -- that could
accomplish them.

7. Skate
for Justice Raises Awareness of Opposition to the Drug War in Upstate New
York

Students for Sensible Drug
Policy's "Skate for Justice" against the drug war made its way from Binghamton
to Ithaca, NY, last Sunday (6/22), with approximately 10 activists skating
some or all of the journey's 49 miles, according to the Ithaca News.
Starting a little after 10:00am, the demonstrators rolled into Ithaca at
approximately 8:00pm, then enjoying a dinner provided at half-price by
the Lost Dog Cafe.

Tom Angell, a member of SSDP's
national board of directors, who represented SSDP's University of Rhode
Island chapter, called the Skate for Justice "a pilgrimage with justice
as the destination." Angell told the Week Online that it was "an
invigorating experience," even though he had to stop at 40 miles due to
an ankle injury.

At one point the group walked
up the largest hill of the route -- silently, according to Angell, "to
take time to reflect on all the lives that have been shattered by the US
drug war" -- and in Angell's case, on the life of Cheryl Miller, medical
marijuana patient and famed activist from New Jersey.

"By being on the roads throughout
the day and passing thousands of motorists and pedestrians," Angell said,
"we were able to raise awareness that drug policy reform is an important
contemporary issue." Skaters sported Skate for Justice t-shirts as
well as StopTheDrugWar.org and SSDP stickers and signs -- visible to thousands
of pedestrians and motorists during their 10 hour tour.

Skate for Justice was spearheaded
by SSDP's Broome Community College chapter. Visit http://www.skateforjustice.org
for pictures and further information.

On Tuesday, June 24, the
Hemp Industries Association (HIA), which represents the interests of the
hemp industry and encourages the research and development of new hemp products,
filed a brief in the Ninth Circuit (San Francisco) asking for a review
of the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) "Final Rule" regarding hemp
foods. If this new "Final Rule" were to take effect, it would ban
hemp seed and oil and consequently destroy the multimillion dollar hemp
food industry.

Due to a Court ordered Stay,
hemp foods remain perfectly legal to import, sell and consume while the
Court hears arguments from the HIA and DEA and renders a decision.

The HIA brief charges that
the DEA's "Final Rule" should be invalidated because the agency is exercising
arbitrary and capricious authority by attempting to outlaw hemp seed and
oil without holding formal hearings on the issue or finding any potential
for abuse. Because trace infinitesimal THC in hemp seed is non-psychoactive
and insignificant, Congress exempted non-viable hemp seed and oil from
control under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), just as Congress exempted
poppy seeds from the CSA, although they contain trace opiates otherwise
subject to control. The brief also charges that DEA acted in an arbitrary
and capricious manner in exempting hemp seed mixed with animal feed, although
Congress made no such distinction in the CSA.

Additionally, the brief elucidates
other major failures by the DEA -- namely, the lack of hearings on this
issue and the failure to comply with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which
requires assessing effects of the proposed change on small businesses.
The brief and other court documents are available at http://www.votehemp.com/PDF/HIAvDEA_finalrules_petition.pdf.

Final Legal Schedule in Hemp
Food Fight:

July 24, 2003: Deadline
for DEA's response to HIA brief

August 8, 2003: Deadline
for HIA's reply to DEA's response

September 17, 2003: Oral
Arguments begin in San Francisco

The "Final Rule," issued on
March 21, 2003, is virtually identical to an "Interpretive Rule" issued
on October 9, 2001 that never went into effect because of a Ninth Circuit
Stay issued on March 7, 2002. On March 28, 2003 the HIA, several
hemp food and cosmetic manufacturers and the Organic Consumers Association
petitioned the Ninth Circuit to once again prevent the DEA from ending
the legal sale of hemp seed and oil products in the US, and on April 16,
2003, the Ninth Circuit again issued a Stay.

North American hemp food
companies voluntarily observe reasonable THC limits similar to those adopted
by European nations as well as Canada and Australia. These limits
protect consumers with a wide margin of safety from any psychoactive effects
or workplace drug-testing interference (http://www.testpledge.com).
The DEA has hypocritically not targeted food manufacturers for using poppy
seeds (in bagels and muffins, for example), even though they contain far
higher levels of trace opiates. The recently revived global hemp
market is a thriving commercial success. Unfortunately, because the
DEA's drug war paranoia has confused non-psychoactive industrial hemp varieties
of cannabis with psychoactive "marihuana" varieties, the US is the only
major industrialized nation to prohibit the growing of industrial hemp.

British officials have delayed
plans to formally downgrade marijuana possession to a non-arrestable offense,
according to statements made this week from a spokesman for the British
Home Office. The legal change, which Home Secretary David Blunkett
had previously promised would occur this summer, is now unlikely to be
implemented until sometime after January 2004.

The Home Office maintains
the delay is because Parliament must first reclassify marijuana under the
1971 Misuse of Drugs Act before any changes in penalties can take place.
Under the proposed plan -- which has been endorsed by Parliament's Advisory
Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee
and the Police Foundation, among others -- marijuana will be reclassified
from a Class B to a Class C drug, the least harmful category of illicit
drugs under British law.

Once reclassified, police
will no longer have the legal authority to make arrests in cases involving
the possession of small amounts of pot, unless there are aggravating factors
present.

This week's announcement
from the Home Office is a departure from statements made by the Secretary
in October of 2001 when he announced that marijuana's reclassification
would be enacted by an executive order, not legislatively. At that
time, Blunkett implied the change could come within several months.
Last summer, he revised that time frame, but reaffirmed plans to reclassify
cannabis by this July.

Marijuana smokers are expected
to receive a warning from police if they possess three grams or less of
cannabis once the new law takes effect.

10. UN/Afghanistan:
Hopes for Stability, Alternative Development and Economic Recovery Will
Not Contain the Opium Renaissance

On June 17, the United Nations
Security Council held a special debate on Afghanistan, with most of the
discussion focusing on the production of opium used for heroin, according
to Marco Perduca, UN Representative for the Transnational Radical Party
and executive director of the International Antiprohibitionist League (IAL).
Among the speakers was Dr. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the
UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Perduca issued the following
statement commenting on Costa's proposals:

Marco Perduca, in Mérida

In the report presented
by the Special envoy of the Secretary General to Afghanistan and by Dr.
Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime,
there is a grim picture of what Afghanistan has become after the "liberation"
from the Taliban. Despite international attention and presence in
the country (the UK fighting drugs, Germans taking care of police and security,
Italians building the justice system and the US fighting terrorists), reconstruction,
economic regeneration and prosperity are not in sight. Law enforcement
is almost impossible outside the capital, and warlords are often chosen
to act as local guarantor of stability.

And of course drugs are back
on the map.

Mr. Costa, who in the past
had delivered more optimistic statements on the issue, has today emphasized
a series of measures [he claims] should be implemented in order to eradicate
the evil crop that is again increasing and finally allow Afghani people
to live a normal life. From alternative development, to micro-credit,
from supply reduction to demand reduction abroad (80% of the heroin that
reaches Europe is produced in Afghanistan) as well as tightened control
of the borders are on UNODC's wish list. Nothing new.

In 1998, [Costa's predecessor]
Pino Arlacchi wanted to make Afghanistan the example of how to reduce drugs
through a series of measures stemming from a "zero tolerance approach"
to the problem. Costa, who chaired the 46th session of the Commission
on Narcotics last April, where the international community reaffirmed its
prohibitionist credo, is trying to promote programs that resemble more
those of the World Bank than those that an agency dedicated to the control
of drugs should take into consideration.

Arlacchi's obsession with
eradicating crops in Afghanistan went as far as striking deals with the
Taliban, while Costa's managerial style is running the risk to put the
emphasis on all the aspects related to drugs and the possible (perfect)
theoretical ways to address those issues and not to the cause of all those
problems. Costa's economical background should help him understand
what the added value of drugs is: Prohibition.

Perduca also reported that Costa's
office found "a steady downward trend" in opium cultivation in Laos and
Myanmar, 22% less land under opium cultivation since 2002 and 60% since
1996, but failed to draw the connection with the resulting (or causative)
increase of opium cultivation in Afghanistan. Perduca charged that
UNODC "had constructed a method of work to answer difficult questions with
very easy answers."

Visit http://www.antiprohibitionist.org
for further information and to read IAL's in-depth report on the use and
misuse of cultivation numbers in the UN's world drug reporting.

11. This Week
in History

June 28, 1776: The
first draft of the Declaration of Independence is written on Dutch hemp
paper. A second draft, the version released on July 4, is also written
on hemp paper. The final draft is copied from the second draft onto
animal parchment.

June 29, 1938: The
Christian Century reports, "[I]n some districts inhabited by Latino Americans,
Filipinos, Spaniards, and Negroes, half the crimes are attributed to the
marijuana craze." This quote, which of course bore no resemblance
to actual reality, illustrates the role of racial prejudice and tensions
in the genesis of drug laws, a repeating historical phenomenon.

June 30, 1906: The
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 is enacted, creating the US Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), with the power to approve all foods and drugs meant
for human consumption. FDA's creation effectively puts the patent
medicine industry out of business. The Act also requires that certain
drugs only be sold on prescription, and launches the "Warning -- May be
habit forming" label that is still in use today. Nevertheless, the
Pure Food and Drug Act, while increasing government control, doesn't quite
amount to drug prohibition as we know it today. That waits eight
more years, for the Harrison Act.

July, 1998: US attorney
general Janet Reno and Mexico attorney general Jorge Madrazo Cuellar sign
the Brownville Agreement, pledging to inform each other about sensitive
cross-border law enforcement operations. The agreement is made in
the aftermath of Operation Casablanca, an 18-month investigation into drug
money laundering at the US-Mexico border, which had sparked the most serious
crisis in US-Mexico relations in recent years.

July 1, 1930: The Federal
Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) is established, an agency preceding the DEA that
is independent of the Department of the Treasury's Prohibition Unit, and
is unaffected by the subsequent passage of the Twenty-First Amendment that
repealed federal Alcohol Prohibition.

July 1, 1973: The Drug
Enforcement Administration is established by President Nixon. It
is designed to be a "superagency" capable of handling all aspects of the
drug problem. The DEA consolidates agents from the BNDD, Customs,
the CIA, and ODALE, and is headed by Myles Ambrose. It becomes known
for its use of "cowboy" law enforcement tactics that stretch the limits
of the Fourth Amendment, including "no-knock" warrants, IRS audits and
wiretaps.

12.
PBS Documentary to Explore Lockney Case Next Tuesday (7/1)

Next week, the PBS series
P.O.V. (a cinematic term for point of view), partnership with Independent
Television Service, will air "Larry v. Lockney," a documentary on Larry
Tannahill's crusade to stop school drug testing in the small west Texas
town of Lockney. Tannahill, a third-generation farmer, was the only
one of 2,000 residents of Lockney to challenge the school's policy, which
saw his son, an A and B student who had never been in trouble, suspended
for 21 days for refusing to take a drug test.

Tannahill, who believed the
policy violated his son's 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches,
sued to overturn the policy, with the help of the ACLU. Tannahill's
campaign drew national headlines, but cost him his job and drew threats
against his family. "Larry v. Lockney," which was produced by Mark
Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck, tells the story.

Visit http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/larryvlockney/
for information, pictures, resources for educators, and ways to get involved
in P.O.V.'s campaign to increase public attention to the documentary and
issue. "Larry v. Lockney" is scheduled to air at 10:00pm EST, Tuesday,
July 1, check local listings.

September 18, Tallahassee, FL, "Innovations in European Drug Policy," the Richard L. Rachin Conference. Sponsored by the Florida State University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, in conjunction with the Journal of Drug Issues, at the Center for Professional Development, contact (850) 644-7569 or [email protected] to register or (850) 644-7368 or [email protected] for further information.

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